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by zahlman 480 days ago
On a meta level, it seems worrying that the probability estimate might update that rapidly....
3 comments

My understanding is that it was due to the moon being full which caused them to not have as much of an ability to observe it during the past few estimations. In an article[0] linked from the above link they state:

> Now that skies are darker after a week of limited visibility around full moon, astronomers have resumed observations

The estimates changed a lot because they were being very transparent about the information as they were discovering it.

[0]: https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2025/02/19/dark-skie...

Why do you think this?

Every observation narrows the range of possible trajectories. After the initial discovery, a lot of observations were scheduled.

Not "worrying" in a rational sense (i.e. we should put more thought into the possibility of this collision), but in a human emotional sense ("if NASA engineers can change their minds this quickly, surely we don't know nearly as much as we think, and the universe feels like a scarier place again").
The odds are changing like a crypto coin price